


A Story About a Fitting

by HugeAlienPie



Series: The Sitcom Verse [4]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Normal Life, Clothes Fittings, Engagement, Food, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-20
Updated: 2018-12-20
Packaged: 2019-09-22 19:59:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17066144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HugeAlienPie/pseuds/HugeAlienPie
Summary: Trying on suits for Clint's wedding? One of Fitz's more stressful mornings in recent memory. But he's got to admit that the rest of the day is turning out pretty damned well.





	A Story About a Fitting

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Winter Solstice! Have a story that has nothing to do with Winter Solstice.

**_August 2012_ **

By 10:00, Fitz felt his eyes glazing over. By 11, he felt his _brain_ glazing over.

Jemma and Daisy were as sunshine-bright as they'd been when they walked through the door. Mack, because he wasn't _in_ the wedding, got to spend the time in the waiting room off to the side, drinking coffee, eating pastries, and flirting harmlessly with the shop assistants.

"Damned bastard," Fitz muttered as he slipped on what had to be the twenty-fifth pair of trousers.

Outside the dressing room, Clint laughed and called, "Which bastard is damned this time, Fitz?"

"All of you," Fitz snarled before popping out of the dressing room.

He could tell immediately that this one was a hit. Clint sat up straighter and made the spinning motion with his finger that Fitz had grown to hate more than any gesture in the history of human gestures. He dutifully twirled slowly and then stood stock still while Clint adjusted the lines of the chocolate brown trousers and tweed waistcoat, held the top button area of the pearl-white dress shirt closed with his fingers and then let it go, rolled up the sleeves and shoved them down again.

He stood back, grinning, and then his unfairly massive arms shoved Fitz toward one of the assistants who'd been helping them today. "All right, you're done!" he announced. "That's the suit. Keep the dresses in color families that go well with that."

Fitz's groan was half relief, half dismay. Thank god he could put on his own clothes again and stop hopping in and out of suits that had been tried on by who knew how many strangers. But because they'd accidentally discovered that Fitz had a keen eye for color, he would be expected to follow the assistants around picking dresses to match the suits.

Life was the most unfair.

Fitz shoved his feet into his trainers and didn't bother pulling up the heels. When he emerged from the dressing room, Clint opened his mouth, but Fitz held up a finger. "You've been lounging on that divan like it's your personal fiefdom all morning. I am not doing a damned thing more until I've had coffee, something sugary and bad for me, and five uninterrupted minutes with my boyfriend." He walked into the waiting room without a backward glance.

The coffee was so smooth and strong it made Fitz want to weep. The pain au chocolat melted on his tongue. And Mack was a bulwark, his chest solid and immovable under Fitz's cheek and his arm an anchoring weight around his shoulders.

"I am _never_ doing this again," Fitz declared, voice muffled against the fabric of Mack's criminally soft white Henley. "If Mum or Jemma or Daisy or whoever wants me in their wedding, I will choose a nice outfit from my closet, and they will deal with it."

Mack gave a rumbling laugh, but it sounded... strained. Fitz might have missed it if his ear hadn't been pressed directly to Mack's chest. Reluctantly, he pulled away until he could see Mack's face, which had a mildly pinched expression that Fitz couldn't read. He opened his mouth to ask what was wrong—

—and the door burst open, Clint rushing into the room like an avenging spirit. A shop assistant hovered behind him, arms full of dresses, expression full of an agony that Fitz was all too familiar with, born of having to deal with Clint in full-on Groomzilla mode.

Fitz sighed, stood, kissed the top of Mack's head, and whispered, "Pardon me while I go rescue a poor, overworked kitten from the stepfather tree." Mack's stunned and delighted laughter followed him as he chivvied Clint out of the room and tried to understand how the man had managed to make a cock-up of everything in the—he checked his watch— _three minutes_ Fitz was out of the room.

He supposed it was nice to be needed. Five minutes to sit would've been nicer.

*

Around 11:45, Fitz sank gratefully onto the divan outside the dressing rooms, which Clint had finally vacated. The attendants' clothes were settled. They just had to narrow the options for Dad and Clint. Fitz had no doubt that he would be involved with the process until the bitter end, but for the moment, Clint didn't actively require him.

Daisy flopped next to him, and Jemma settled neatly on his other side. Daisy's brightly striped blouse gave him a headache, but the tiny pattern of white dots on Jemma's black dress didn't do much better. Fitz closed his eyes and leaned his head against the wall.

When would he learn that personal autonomy simply did not exist when he was with his sisters? The instant his eyes closed, Daisy's hand started pawing at his face. He swatted it away, but it returned immediately, this time with backup from Jemma.

"Oi," he snapped, trying to shove the hands away. "Cut it out."

"Fiiiitz," Daisy whined, swiping his cheek and flicking his ear—dear god, were all four hands involved? "We're booooored."

"Yes, Fitz," Jemma said, tone brisker but no less shit-stirring, "entertain us."

"Can you not leave me in peace for five bloody minutes?" he groaned, mostly a token protest, since he knew the answer damned well.

A rumbling laugh in front of them got Fitz's eyes squinting open. "I was coming to see how you were," Mack said, surveying the scene, "but you got everything under control."

Fitz narrowed his eyes at Mack and said sweetly, "Daisy, love, if you're looking for a more productive task for your hands, could you give Mack the finger for me?" Daisy laughed and shoved Fitz's head into the wall.

"Fitz," Jemma said like she'd had the most brilliant idea ever, which made Fitz want to cry, "you should come accessory-shopping with us."

"Oh!" Daisy bounced in her seat. "Yeah, come on, let's do that!"

Fitz slitted his eyes open and looked pointedly at the large display of jewelry, purses, and shoes in the front of the room.

Jemma scoffed. "That's rubbish. Not our styles at all. Come on. We want to look our absolute best for Dad and Clint, and you are precisely the man to help us do it."

Fitz groaned and looked up at Mack for the save. Mack smiled gently and squeezed himself precariously onto the edge of the divan, rubbing Fitz's back. Dear, sweet Mack. Mack would save him. "Go on, Turbo," he murmured, the gentle rhythm of his hand across Fitz's back lulling him toward sleep. "You go with them. I'll look after Clint."

Vile, traitorous Mack, who would be sleeping on the sofa for a week.

*

At 1:15, Fitz texted Mack, _if u don't come rescue me & buy me food RIGHT NOW, i will not be held accountable 4 my actions_

Mack's reply came fairly soon after: _clint won't be happy_

 _clint,_ Fitz replied with indignant jabs to his keyboard, _may kiss my pasty scottish bum_

Mack sent the crying-laughing emoji and then added, _omw_

Fitz put his phone away feeling greatly relieved. He flexed his hand with a grimace; it'd been a fairly good day, considering how long it'd been and how much he'd been doing. But he had his limits, and nearly five hours of shopping tested those limits sorely.

"Oi, feral pig-dogs!" he called, earning a dirty look from the other shoppers and workers in the store and a loud snorting laugh from his sisters. "Mack's coming to take us to lunch. Root up your last truffles and let's get out of here."

With a lot of eye-rolling and quiet complaining, Jemma and Daisy paid for the handbags and jewelry they'd been ogling, telling each other they could return it if it turned out not to match their dresses. It would. Fitz was certain. And he hated that he was certain. Then they swept out ahead of him like the princesses they were, like the blazing sun and brain-melting humidity didn't touch them, with a smirk and a quiet, "Feral pig-dogs?" from Daisy.

Mack met them at a cozy and blessedly air-conditioned cafe Bobbi and Lance had introduced Jemma to. He regaled them with the story of Clint's continued meltdown in the boutique. Mack had been forced to call Natasha to come holler sense into him. "When I left, she had him pinned down on the divan and was literally sitting on him."

Daisy howled with laughter, and Jemma grinned broadly into her soda. "God," Fitz said as he popped a green grape into his mouth, "do weddings make _everyone_ unhinged, or is Clint just special?"

Jemma shrugged. "You’ll be the next to find out, won't you?" she said, and Fitz choked on his grape until Mack whacked it out of his windpipe.

Of course they'd talked about it. They lived together with two dogs in Fitz's childhood home. You didn't do that with someone you didn't see at least the _potential_ of forever with. But they'd carefully not talked in definitive terms, and _certainly_ not while Dad and Clint were planning The Wedding of the Decade.

"Jemma!" Fitz hissed.

"What?" Daisy demanded. "Are we still pretending you haven't been engaged since the day Fitz moved into the house?"

"We're _not_ ," Mack said with that same tone of brittle patience. Since his accident, Fitz wasn't the best at reading people; Mack was upset about _something_ , but Fitz couldn't get clear to see what.

Jemma rolled her eyes, and her voice had a condescending sing-song quality as she said, "Boys, _everyone_ thinks you're engaged."

"Except America's moms," Daisy said, drumming her fingernails against the side of her glass. "Who think you're already married."

Fitz groaned and only refrained from banging his head on the table because this place was too classy for that.

Leaving aside the ridiculousness of the whole world, apparently, thinking he and Mack were engaged, Jemma was right about one thing: he was, logically, the next member of the family who would get hitched. He and Mack been together more than two years, living together for more than half that time.

And it wasn't that he wasn't enthusiastic about the prospect of one day being married to Mack, but if he'd learned anything from the eight weeks so far of Dad and Clint's engagement, it was that mixing his family and weddings had the same effect as mixing Coke and Mentos. And Fitz had no doubt that, once Clint and Dad were safely married off, Clint would be more than happy to turn his Groomzilla tendencies, and Uncle Nick his unholy meddling, onto the next unfortunate sucker.

Fitz was _not_ looking forward to being that sucker.

Fitz groaned and slapped his hands over his face. "God, we should elope."

It took a minute for the profoundness of the silence to register in Fitz's brain. He cautiously lowered his hands and looked at the rest of the table. The five raised eyebrows, two dropped jaws (and one clenched) that greeted him reflected his feelings, too.

"What?"

"Um, Fitz," Jemma said tentatively.

He made a slashing motion with his hand. "Jemma, _don't_." He looked at Mack. "What was it? What did I say?"

Mack sighed and rubbed his face briefly before reaching out and grabbing both of Fitz's hands in one of his enormous ones, which never failed to reduced Fitz's stress levels by approximately one thousand percent. "It's nothing bad," he said right away, he _always_ said right away, so Fitz wouldn't worry. "We just got done saying that we weren't engaged, and then you jumped us to eloping."

"Oh." Fitz blew out a breath. "Is that all? I was—I made a few leaps."

Mack smiled faintly. "You wanna tell me about them?"

Fitz shrugged. "Clint. Weddings. Our family." The collective wince around the table suggested that no more needed to be said.

They returned to their lunches. Mack, Daisy, and Jemma picked up the conversation mostly where they'd left it before they'd detoured through are-Fitz-and-Mack-engaged.

But it was in Fitz's head, lodged like a poppy seed in his teeth that his tongue wouldn't stop poking. Now that he'd had the idea of running off with Mack and finding an officiant to marry them—no pomp, no fuss—he found it immeasurably appealing.

Fitz wasn't sure how long he spaced out before Mack's elbow gently nudged his ribs. "Penny for 'em," Mack said when he looked up.

For a long beat, Fitz looked at Mack. Tried to imagine being married to him, being legally bound to him for the rest of their lives. He waited for the panic to set in, but he kept breathing, sure and steady—if anything, _easier_ than before he'd had the thought.

Being married to Mack, he realized, wouldn't be different from what they had now, except that they would be legally authorized to take care of each other if something went wrong. Mack hadn't had the option with Tim, and he knew what it meant to Mack that they had it now.

Now that Fitz was thinking about it, he was amazed Mack hadn't asked already. He must be holding off for Fitz's sake, so he wouldn't feel rushed into marriage when he wasn't ready.

That thought gave form to the amorphous half-plan that had been rolling around in Fitz's head and propelled it out of his mouth. "Let's get married."

Fitz was vaguely aware that Daisy and Jemma were making wounded seal noises on the other side of the table, but his eyes were only for Mack. He watched Mack's face anxiously, worried that he'd biffed it again. It wasn't the most romantic proposal in the history of the world, but having heard the story of how Lance proposed to Bobbi the first time, it couldn't have been the worst ever.

"Wow, okay, Turbo, that's..." Mack rubbed his jaw. He wasn't saying yes. Why wasn't he saying yes?

Fitz reviewed his awkward proposal and realized he'd left out the important part. "Today," he added hastily. "Let's get married today." He took a deep breath. Might as well do it right. "Alphonso Mackenzie, will you marry me today?"

Now there were wounded manatee sounds, and Mack's expression cycled through a lot of emotions that Fitz couldn't properly identify before a broad, gorgeous grin spread across Mack's face. "Yeah, all right." He nodded decisively, took Fitz's hands in his, and looked him in the eyes. "Yes, Leopold Fitz, I will marry you today." He was beaming as he leaned forward to kiss Fitz.

Fitz hadn't thought about getting engaged, or being engaged, but he understood, intellectually, that it was supposed to be a life-changing experience. But his life didn't feel changed. He felt like literally nothing was going to change between him and Mack but their tax filing status and their ability to make certain medical decisions for each other. With a petulant grumble, he was forced to admit that his sisters (and apparently America's moms) were right: he and Mack _were_ married, in every sense except the legal.

Speaking of his sisters, the sounds they were making had progressed from wounded manatee to beached whale pod, and Fitz's ears were being absolutely assaulted by the fake-shutter sounds of their phone cameras. Never looking away from Mack, Fitz pointed across the table and said, "Don't post those until after the wedding. I don't want anyone hunting us down."

Daisy whistled. "Damn. You're really going to do this without the fam."

Fitz rolled his eyes. "That is the entire point of an elopement, Daisy."

Jemma turned her phone so Fitz could see the little airplane icon in the corner. "Look. Airplane mode. I couldn't post if I tried." She started to pull her phone back and then paused, her eyes taking a calculating light that Fitz didn't like one bit. " _If_ —"

"Extortion, Simmons?" Mack asked, one eyebrow lifting.

" _Negotiation_ ," she said. "Daisy and I promise not to post pictures of your tragically short engagement if you promise that Daisy or I, and preferably both, get to be there when the parentals find out about this stunt."

" _All_ the parentals," Daisy added as she and Jemma high-fived each other. "No weaseling out on technicalities with Clint and Uncle Nick."

Fitz didn't have to think about it. The three of them could be unspeakably cruel to each other—and had been, on countless occasions—but he knew, to the depths of his being, that Jemma and Daisy had his back. Jemma proposed it as a punishment, but Fitz would never have wanted to tell their parents what he'd done without at least one of his sisters at his side. "Deal," he said, and the three of them shook on it, and that was that.

Leo Fitz was eloping.

*

Of course, said was not done. Virginia, unlike every other state Fitz knew about, made getting a marriage license horrifyingly easy and getting licensed to _perform_ marriages frustratingly hard. So while he and Mack could conceivably have a license in their hands by 3:00, they were struggling to find someone who 1) had an opening in their schedule; 2) wasn't clear across the state; and 3) wouldn't charge them the GDP of an industrialized nation for the privilege of the rush job. From the second car, Daisy and Jemma were blowing up Fitz's phone with texts keeping him updated on the identical frustrations they were experiencing (which made Fitz wonder who was driving).

After Fitz made his fifth frustrated noise in ten minutes (Daisy told him once that it sounded like a blocked-up trumpet, but she played the viola, so what did she know?), Mack made the face he usually reserved for someone finding his secret Halloween candy stash in mid-November.

"What?" Fitz asked.

Mouth turned down at the corners, Mack asked, "You trust me?"

Fitz gawped at him for a minute before waving his hands around in a manner that he hoped conveyed _I am attempting to marry you fifteen minutes after proposing, what do you think?_ Mack laughed softly and gave Fitz a besotted grin that basically ruined his hopes of higher functioning for the rest of the day. He kept one hand on the wheel and one eye on the road while he fished his phone out of his pocket, placed a call, and clipped the phone into the dash-mounted docking port. Fitz wasn't sure what he expected, but he flinched when the call connected and angry, rapidfire Spanish started spilling out of the phone before Mack could get a "hello" out.

Fitz hadn't studied Spanish, but four years of high school Latin gave him an edge on understanding Romance languages. Whoever was haranguing Mack used too many profanities and slang terms for Fitz to follow everything, but the gist was that Mack was a yutz who never called, and that he'd better not be calling for a favor, because it wasn't happening.

Mack kept glancing sheepishly at Fitz, clearly embarrassed to have Fitz hearing this. Fitz kept grinning wider. Mack's responses to the woman were in clear but slow Spanish, like he was rusty at it, which confirmed her contention that he wasn't keeping in touch. But he got his point across clear enough: _I'm on my way to the county clerk's office for a marriage certificate. Will you perform the ceremony?_

There was a long, _long_ pause on the other end, and then the woman said in English, "Fuck you, Mackenzie. You call me out of the blue after a year without a word, and you ask for the _one thing_ I would never refuse you." She made a disgusted noise that sounded like it was dredged from the back of her throat and then switched back to Spanish to say that she'd see him, his damn certificate, and his damn fiancé at 5:15.

Mack gave an embarrassed laugh, said, " _Gracias, Elena. Te debo_ ," and hung up in the middle of Elena saying "Damn right you do."

Mack rolled his eyes when he saw the size of Fitz's grin. Fitz leaned his head against the headrest and folded his hands in his lap. "So," he said. "Elena."

"One of the lawyers who advised me when Tim's parents sued. She's a judge now, and she's licensed to perform marriages."

Fitz's eyebrows shot up. "Virginia doesn't do courthouse weddings," he said. That had been the first crushing blow of his research.

"Some judges get the credentials, because they know people want it. Or so they can do favors for friends."

Fitz tsked. "Even friends who don't call enough?"

Mack glanced at him sheepishly. "Caught that, huh?"

"Enough."

"She can be... intimidating. I was in a bad place after I lost the house. I couldn't face her."

"And yet you sit down to dinner with my mother once a month."

"Dinner with your mother," Mack says with a shudder, "I accept as a part of loving you. I wouldn't do it on my own."

Which was fair. Fitz wasn't sure _he_ would voluntarily spend time with Melinda May, either, if they weren't related.

*

The line at the county clerk's office was longer than they expected, but at 3:23, Fitz was staring at a license for Leopold James Fitz to marry Alphonso Aaron Mackenzie. They had two hours to kill before Judge Rodriguez—"She's doing us a favor, Mack, and I don't know her. Of course I'm going to be formal."—was free for the day, and it was too early for dinner, especially given how late they'd had lunch.

"I spotted an adorable shopping center up the block," Jemma said, looping her arm through Fitz's.

Fitz groaned. "How can you still want to shop after the morning we had?" He turned a beseeching look toward Mack. "Mack, please help your poor besieged fiancé."

Mack was looking at his watch and worrying his lower lip with his teeth. The hairs on the back of Fitz's neck stood up. "Uh, actually, Turbo, I gotta run an errand."

"An _errand_!" Fitz yelped, not caring how loud and shrill he sounded. " _Now_?"

"Yeah. I, uh—" Mack swooped in for a fast kiss and wouldn't meet Fitz's eyes. "Yo-Yo's courtroom is on the 12th floor. I'll meet you there by five. Absolute latest."

"Mack! Where are you—Mack, don't _leave_!" But Mack was striding away on his ridiculously long legs, and Fitz refused to chase after him like a jilted bride. He turned to Jemma and Daisy, who were watching the proceedings with wide eyes and dropped jaws. "My fiancé has abandoned me," he moaned. "I have been left at the altar!"

"You're not _at_ the altar yet," Daisy pointed out, because she was a terrible person.

"You're saying 'fiancé' an awful lot," Jemma said, because she was worse.

"Jemma, I'm going to be engaged for a grand total of four and a half hours. You'd best believe I'm going to say it as often as possible during that time." He scowled in the general direction that Mack had disappeared in. "If my fiancé bothers to _show up for our wedding_!"

Daisy and Jemma rolled their eyes in tandem. Fitz ignored them.

*

If there was one upside to Mack's abrupt and suspicious departure, it was that Jemma and Daisy immediately dropped their plans to drag him out shopping, in deference to his anxiety. The anxiety was plenty real—having a man agree to marry you and then _run away from the venue_ did nothing to boost self-confidence. But he _may_ have exaggerated his distress slightly to garner sympathy from his sisters—and get them away from the shops. Instead, when Daisy announced, with an unholy glee, that the building housed a museum of county art in the basement, they jumped on the opportunity and spent the next hour scratching their heads at an array of quilts bearing the images of famous people who'd lived in the county. Given their proximity to the Beltway, it was a _lot_ of quilts.

As the elevator opened to deposit them on the 12th floor (where _Yo-Yo_ 's courtroom was, apparently), Fitz caught the rumble of a familiar voice and immediately breathed easier. When he stepped into the lobby and realized who that voice was talking _to_ , he felt his expression settle into what Daisy called his _resting wtf face_.

" _Honestly_ , Mack," he said, reaching out his arms to pull his brother-in-law-to-be into a hug, "if you wanted Ruben here, you only had to say. No need to get mysterious."

Ruben laughed as he slapped Fitz's back and stepped out of the hug. Mack's eyes were firmly fixed on the ceiling. "Wasn't me, man," Ruben said. "Jackass didn't know I was going to be home. When he told me what was going on—"

"Forced it outta me, more like," Mack said, his tone delightfully petulant.

"—I kinda reverse kidnapped him, said I'd call Mom and Dad if he didn't bring me with him."

Fitz laughed. Ruben had taken months to warm up to him, but now they were, if not friends, then willing allies in the struggle against the occasional ridiculousness of Alphonso Mackenzie.

"Let's have it, then," Fitz said, turning to Mack. "If you went for your lucky axe, I swear—"

Mack's expression could've melted paint off a destroyer. "I don't _have_ a lucky axe," he grumbled and then slammed his mouth shut over what would probably have been "at my parents' house." Fitz and Ruben exchanged delighted glances. Mack's glare sharpened. "Just for that, I'm not going to tell you yet what I was doing."

"You're gonna make him wait?" Ruben asked. "Man, Alfie, that is _cold_." Then he held his fist out, and Mack bumped it. Honestly. These Mackenzie brothers.

*

Judge Elena Rodriguez, when she summoned them into her courtroom at 5:15 on the dot, was full of elegance and fire and hadn't entirely forgiven Mack. He tried pouring on the charm, his slow, careful Spanish full of _Lo ciento_ and _Yo se_ and _Por favor, Yo-Yo_.

Judge Rodriguez was _not_ charmed. "Absolutely not," she said. "You don't talk to me for a year, you lose the right to call me that." Fitz hid a smile behind his hand. Mack was _awful_ at placating people who were mad at him.

The motion must've been bigger than he'd realized, because suddenly a pair of painfully sharp brown eyes were scrutinizing him. "You the guy?" she asked.

Fitz nodded and held out his hand, which she shook in a very firm grip. "Leo Fitz."

She jabbed a finger into Mack's sternum. "You sure you want to marry this joker?"

Fitz beamed and took deep breaths to calm the joyful cacophony of his heart. "Surer than I've ever been of anything," he said.

Judge Rodriguez harrumphed but shrugged and said, "All right. Let's do this."

With no time for planning, they defaulted to the standard wedding ceremony. But when Judge Rodriguez tried to lead them into the exchange of canned vows, an urgency bubbled up inside Fitz, and he said, "Wait, hang on," before he'd thought it through. "Sorry, sorry, I don't—" He paused, lips pursed, and took a slow, deep breath. "We didn't have time to write anything. And I know that extemporaneous speaking isn't my… forte—is that right?" Daisy laughed wetly and nodded. "But this is my wedding. And I'd like to say something to the man I'm marrying.” He looked at Elena. "If that's okay."

Judge Rodriguez waved him on.

Fitz looked up into kind, shrewd, twinkling, loving brown eyes, opened his mouth, and just... _talked_. "So, uh, I don't know if you know this, but, um, a surprising number of people who've crossed my path over the years have felt it was their place to inform me that I would be single forever." Mack's grip on his hands tightened. "Buried in my work, wrapped up in my weird family..." He tried to search for a delicate word, but, fuck it. This was no time for sugar-coating. "Broken.

"Mack, you have _never_ treated me like that. You encourage my work; my weird family hasn't scared you off yet; and you've never once treated me like I needed fixing. Since the day we met, you've only ever asked me to be honest with you. So I am telling you, with every shred of honesty I have: I love you, Alphonso Aaron Mackenzie, and I commit the rest of my life to showing you how much."

Fitz wasn't sure, but he thought he heard a sniffle or two from around them. He couldn't tell. He was focused on the man in front of him, the one releasing their grasp on one side so he could cup Fitz's cheek in one of his enormous hands, rub his calloused thumb over Fitz's cheekbone. "Fitz," he said, and Fitz was dumbfounded when he heard the shake in Mack's voice, "the moment I laid eyes on you I thought, 'Damn, this punk is gonna ruin my life.'" Ruben and Judge Rodriguez's eyes widened, but Jemma and Daisy chuckled, and Fitz thought his face might crack, his grin was so wide. "And I was absolutely right. And it turns out that that life? The one you ruined? It was small and lonely and not worth keeping. You brought things back to me that I hadn't known were missing. I don't know what the rest of my life is going to look like, but I know I want to make that life with you. Thank you for letting me."

Mack paused a minute, like he was thinking of adding something else. Fitz nudged him. "Say it. Who knows when you'll get another chance."

Mack shook his head. "Not the time or place," he murmured. It clicked then, and Fitz nodded, adding a trip to Arlington Cemetery to his mental to-do list.

He looked at Judge Rodriguez and was startled to see her wiping hastily at her eyes. "Are there rings to be exchanged?" she asked, voice rough.

Fitz started to say no, or not yet, but Mack, looking sheepish, made a "gimme" gesture at Ruben, whose shit-eating grin could've powered small cities. For a brief and horrifying moment, Fitz envisioned Mack solemnly offering up his dog tags, but when he turned back from his brother, he was holding an ordinary-looking, if old, ring box. "These were my great-grandparents' rings. My great-grandfather got them in France when he was sent there in World War I. He, uh..." He gave Fitz a searching look that begged him to understand. Fitz took a deep breath and braced himself. "He came back shell-shocked, and my great-grandmother's family told her he was a bad catch. But she never loved him any less."

Fitz's breath caught, and he closed his eyes briefly against the onslaught of emotions slamming into him. He opened them again and smiled weakly at Mack. "I would be so honored to wear them, Mack."

Mack beamed and opened the box. The rings were a pair of identical plain silver bands. Nothing fancy to them at all. They were perfect. Fitz reached out and pulled the larger one from its cushion. His hands barely shook at all.

Mack winced when Fitz put the ring on him. Not big enough, then. And Fitz's eyes widened when Mack put the smaller ring on him; Mack's great-grandma had big fingers. But they were on, and they looked beautiful, and Fitz's heart felt so full he thought it might burst.

Other things may have happened; Fitz was floating too far above the ground to remember. But then Judge Rodriguez was beaming, and her eyes looked watery, and she said, "By the power vested in me by the state of Virginia, I pronounce you married." Fitz looked up at Mack's face, the beloved face he was going to spend the rest of his life looking at, and he burst into tears. It made their first kiss as husbands far more difficult than Fitz might've liked, but Mack was crying, too, so he figured that made it okay.

They posed while Judge Rodriguez's clerk took the obligatory round of post-ceremony pictures, which Jemma, Daisy, and Ruben were posting to social media before they hit the elevators. They took everyone to dinner, including Elena ("Call me Yo-Yo," she'd insisted with a sly grin toward Mack. When she'd seen Fitz's reaction to that, she'd laughed and said, "Elena, at least") and the clerk. Fitz left his phone in airplane mode so that he wouldn't have to deal with whatever blowing-up it was currently doing.

Around two tables shoved together in the restaurant, they swapped stories, stole each other's food, and played a game of "name Fitz and Mack's future babies and pets," where it became increasingly difficult which name was meant for which category. And Fitz looked at them, even the ones he barely knew, and thought about how much he loved them, and how little had changed. There was a certificate on its way to county records confirming their new legal status. They had a pair of rings in a box in Mack's pocket until they could get properly resized. And that was... it. Only that had changed for them today. Fitz leaned against Mack's warm, solid frame, and Mack slid his arm around Fitz's shoulders without hesitating, without pausing in what he was currently saying to Ruben. And that, Fitz thought, was how it should be.

(The other thing that had changed were the seventy-two Facebook and Instagram notifications, fifteen emails, and nine voicemails, six from Clint, waiting on Fitz's phone.)

(But he didn't know about that yet.)

(Let's leave him his ignorance for a while longer.)

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> I still have [a tumblr](http://hugealienpie.tumblr.com) 'cause I'm behind schedule yay


End file.
